1. Field of the Invention
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. .sctn..sctn. 119 and/or 365 to "Method for Working in a Specimen and a Stage for the Method," Application No. H10-019055 filed in JAPAN on Jan. 30, 1998 and Method for Working in a Specimen and a Stage for the Method," Application No. H10-135179 filed in JAPAN on May 18, 1998, the entire content of both of which is herein incorporated by reference.
This invention relates to analyzing method of a specimen using a fluorescence analyzer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to observe a gel specimen treated by electrophoresis, the specimen is exposed to excitation light so that the specimen generates fluorescence light to be detected by a photo detector. Two types of illuminators are known in the art to irradiate the specimen with the excitation light. One is the transparent illuminator and the other is the reflective illuminator. In the transparent illuminator, the excitation light penetrates the specimen toward the photo detector. In the reflective illuminator, the excitation light reflects on the specimen toward the photo detector. The reflective illuminator is more reliable than the transparent illuminator due to less amount of the excitation light that directly reaches to the photo detector. Therefore, the reflective illuminator is preferred for various fluorescence analyzers such as the spectroscopic fluorescent photometer and the fluorescent microscope.
The publication "ILLUSTRATED BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS VOL.2" published in Japan by SHUJUNSHA Co., Ltd. on Sep. 25, 1995 discloses a working method to extract deoxyribonucleic acid from gel. In Chapter 3, paragraph 4 of this publication, a gel specimen is put on the transparent illuminator to be exposed by the excitation light. The essential deoxyribonucleic acid band may be cut and extracted with a scalpel or a knife under see-through observation of an electrophoresis pattern over the transparent illuminator.
However, due to the transparent illuminator the operator has to wear a face shield and gloves to be protected from the harmful excitation radiation such as ultraviolet light. Further, a dark room is required for the work. Accordingly, the work of accessing the specimen may become inefficient.
On the other hand, the reflective illuminator may not be suitable for the work since the scalpel or the knife may not be used over the gel specimen. Such tools may block off the excitation light so that the electrophoresis pattern is hardly observed with the reflective illuminator.